=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=None
|storemode=property
|title=Closing the Discovery Gap in Environmental Information Resources using Semantic Annotations: the TaToo Approach
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-679/paper12.pdf
|volume=Vol-679
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/enviroinfo/LoboCSAS10
}}
==Closing the Discovery Gap in Environmental Information Resources using Semantic Annotations: the TaToo Approach ==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-679/paper12.pdf
Closing the discovery gap in environmental information
resources using semantic annotations: the TaToo
Approach
Tomas Pariente Lobo1, Mauricio Ciprian1, Gerald Schimak2, Giuseppe Avellino3,
Sascha Schlobinski4
1
ATOS Origin, Madrid, Spain, mauricio.ciprian@atosresearch.eu,
tomas.parientelobo@atosresearch.eu
2
Austrian Institute of Technology, Seibersdorf, Austria, gerald.schimak@ait.ac.at
3
Elsag Datamat, Rome, Italy, giuseppe.avellino@elsagdatamat.com
4
cismet, Saarbrucken, Germany, sascha.schlobinski@cismet.de
Abstract. Internet has allowed the exponential growing of the information
available in all knowledge domains. This information is published in a non-
coordinated way using different standards and formats. Traditional search
engines solve with relative success the needs of most Internet users searching
for general purpose information. However, specific users like scientists trying
to gather scientific information across boundaries require more specific and
refined information retrieval techniques to satisfy their needs. Obtaining this
kind of information with traditional search engines is a time-consuming task
with no guaranties of success. The environmental domain is not a specific
exception to that problem. The TaToo project aims at solving the problem by
using a semantic approach i.e. enrich information with semantic annotations in
order to improve the discovery of environmental resources.
Keywords: semantic annotation; semantic tagging; model search and
discovery; web services; environmental information enrichment.
1 Introduction
The TaToo (Tagging Tools based on a Semantic Discovery Framework) project tries
to build tools that allow users to discover and tag resources of interest in order to
facilitate their search by other users having similar interests. The tools developed in
the TaToo project will be mainly focused on environmental information resources
(both data and services).
The tagging process in TaToo will consist of adding semantic meta-information,
with the goal of improving the discovery process and also the interpretation and
evaluation of its validity. As mentioned in previous papers [1, 2], the addition of
axiom-based semantics to environmental data overcomes the limitations of other
strategies such as thesauri, dictionaries and schemas due to the fact that the
expressivity of the information is increased , and the complexity required to convey is
decreased as addressed in [3].
The TaToo tools aim at creating an information enrichment cycle of continuous
discovery, enrichment (tagging) and publishing in order to encourage communities to
setup, use, extend and promote their knowledge. Fig. 1 reflects the life-cycle of the
information enrichment as envisaged in TaToo.
Fig. 1. TaToo’s cycles of information enrichment
TaToo foresees to deal with different types of environmental information
resources, such as catalogues, environmental models, Web services or Web pages,
among others. These resources have to be discovered, tagged, and evaluated.
Evaluation and tagging of resources by the end user make possible the information
enrichment process; searches will be more and more effective as each time based on a
larger amount of available metadata provided by the users.
TaToo has the objective of allowing a cross-domain discovery of resources in the
environmental field, meaning that resources annotated with different purposes and
possibly different ontologies (defining ontology as a description of an area of
knowledge [4]) should be retrieved using a common framework. However, there are
two major challenges while trying to solve this semantic heterogeneity issue:
Allowing multi-domain annotation schema and implementing an extensible discovery
mechanism. In order to solve those problems Wache [5] proposes three ways for
integrating ontologies: by using a single ontology, multiple ontologies or a hybrid
approach. These ways have been evaluated in a previous paper of TaToo project [1].
We concluded to use the hybrid approach for, evaluating the most widely used
ontologies in the environmental field as candidates to be used as basis of the shared
ontology. Also, the ontologies used and developed in TaToo project will be based on
existing W3C standards, particularly RDF, RDFS and OWL. In the ontology
engineering process we will also try to reuse as much shared vocabularies as possible
such as DC[6], FOAF[7], SIOC[8]. TaToo will not provide an ontology engineering
tool, but it will rely on existing tools for ontology engineering such as the NeOn
Toolkit or Protégé. Within TaToo we use the NeOn methodology to build ontology
networks and semantic applications.
The TaToo’s tools will be applied to solve particular problems in three scenarios
embedded in highly complex environmental domains: climate change, agriculture,
and anthropogenic impacts of pollution. This last scenario is deeply described in [9]
2 TaToo Architecture
In order to fulfil the TaToo goal of providing functionality for discovery, tagging,
searching and evaluating environmental resources, the TaToo framework has to
supply a set of services at server side providing the implementation of the
functionality, plus a graphical user interface that lets the end users interact with the
server interface. In the TaToo architecture it is possible to identify four key building
blocks. These building blocks are shown in Fig. 2.
Cross Presentation
User Components
Search & Evaluate /
Tagging
Discovery Validate
Portlet
Portlet Portlet
System Components
Service
TaToo Public
Services
Search & Evaluate /
Tagging
Discovery Validate
Server
Server Server
Business
Communication
Administration
TaToo Core
Security
Tagging
Clearinghouse
Processor
Discovery
Processor
Semantic Processor
Ontology Manager
Semantic Harvesting
Framework Resource Harvester
Reasoner Resource
Resource
Connector
Data
(Meta)Data Management
RDF Ontology
Data Access Store
Relation RDF
al Resourc
e List
Fig. 2: TaToo Initial Architecture
The ‘User Components’ building block (Presentation tier) contains three different
sub-blocks. Tagging Tool, Search & Discovery Tool, and Evaluate / Validate Tool
offer the respective client side components to exploit system corresponding
functionality. In general, these components are supposed to be directly used by the
end user and can be implemented as portlets, external applications, browser plug-ins
or API's.
The ‘TaToo Public Services’ block (Service tier) contains corresponding sub-
blocks at server side. These are generally Web services offering an interface to the
underneath TaToo Core components.
The ‘TaToo Core’ building block (Business tier) is the main part of the architecture
and contains 'core' TaToo components implementing the business logic. In particular
four components are of major importance:
• The Clearinghouse is a central component for accessing the metadata storage
and serves also as an information exchange support between the core system
components;
• The Semantic Processor is the fundamental component dealing with
Semantics. It uses a set of (pluggable) ontologies (in the environmental
domain) to provide functionality based on semantics. In general, it relies on
an application framework and a reasoner to provide its functionality. As an
application framework provides useful APIs to manipulate RDF, support
SPARQL query, and others;
• The Harvester is the component capable of retrieving external resources (and
associated metadata) that could be either data or associated metadata stored
in catalogues, Web services or information contained in Web pages. The
harvester plays the role of retrieving already available resource metadata.
Finally, the ‘(Meta) Data Management’ building block (Data tier) deals with the
storage where metadata on resources are stored (both resource owner metadata and
metadata provided by end users through tagging).
3. Conclusions
We have presented in this paper the TaToo project and first results obtained so far,
including a first definition of TaToo architecture. This architecture will be refined in
the cycle of three iterations planned in the project. However, we envisage that the
TaToo system will mitigate the burden of adding semantic meta-information to
environmental resources in a community driven way facilitating the search and
discovery processes.
We expect that at the end of the project, the users of the tools provided in this
project will benefit from having semantically-enriched environmental resources
shared with their scientific community.
From the technical perspective TaToo will realise an extensible and cross-domain
semantic framework able to deal with environmental tagging and discovery. This
framework will be validated through the TaToo Validation Scenarios, but will be
potentially used in the bigger picture of the environmental domain.
Acknowledgments: The research leading to these results has received funding from
the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under
Grant Agreement Number 247893.
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